‘Stir the soup!’ the castle cook shouted. ‘Grease the goose! Peel the eels! Pummel the pastry! Are those blackbirds ready for the pie?’
She was a small, plump woman, with rosy cheeks and fair hair pinned up under a white cap. The pockets of her long white apron bristled with wooden spoons, soup ladles and basting brushes, and a huge key-ring jangled at her belt.
As she called out commands, people rushed to do her bidding.
A woman carrying a tall, wobbling jelly in the shape of the castle, almost collided with a man with a barrel of eels on his shoulder. Another man hurried in with a stick hung with pheasants, while girls in white aprons and caps stood in a row at the long table, knives flashing as they chopped leeks at high speed.
It was boiling hot. Everyone’s face was red and damp. Fires blazed at either hearth, and as the bakers opened the bread-ovens and slid the bread tins in and out, hot air lifted in clouds of wavering heat. Beside each fire, a small dog ran round and round in a wheel, turning the great haunches of wild boar on their spits, fat sputtering as it splashed onto the coals. One woman was plucking blackbirds in a storm of dark feathers. Another was breaking eggs into a bowl and whisking them into a yellow froth. Yet another was grinding herbs and oil in a granite mortar.
The cook now stood at a huge cauldron hung above one of the fires. A thin man hurried to bring her a stool. She hopped up onto it nimbly, and bent to sniff the soup. The thin man—who was twice as tall as the cook—twisted his hands together. The cook frowned and drew out a long-handled spoon from her apron. She scooped up a tiny spoonful of broth and sipped it. Her frown deepened. The thin man gnawed his fingernails, while everyone nearby turned to watch, holding their breath in anticipation.
‘Perhaps some thyme,’ the cook said, and the thin man rushed to get her a sprig of the sweet-scented herb. She stripped off the leaves and dropped them one by one into the soup, sniffing the steam that roiled out of the cauldron. ‘Mmmm. Maybe a smidgen of salt.’
‘Yes, Mistress Pippin, of course. More salt,’ he said. He grabbed a bowl of sea salt crystals, and the cook took a tiny pinch and sprinkled it into the soup. She stirred it once, twice, thrice, then plucked a fresh spoon from her apron and took another tiny sip. Slowly she nodded her head. ‘Perfect.’
The thin man beamed in delight, and everyone around him shook his hand and congratulated him. The cook jumped down from her stool, and smoothed her apron. Then Tom’s stomach rumbled loudly. It had been a long time since breakfast, and the steam from the soup smelt delicious.
The cook turned around, hands on hips. ‘Tom, at last! Where have you been all this time? Did you find my mushrooms?’
‘Yes …’ Tom began. He badly wanted to tell his mother about the wild man’s warning, but she did not give him a chance.
‘My nettles?’
‘Yes.’
‘My dandelion leaves?’
‘Yes, Mam.’
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ Tom’s mother seized the bucket from him and emptied it on the table. ‘Maude, begin the mushroom and quail pasties!’ She scooped up all the mushrooms into a bowl and threw it across the table to another white-capped woman, who squeaked and just managed to catch it. ‘Nancy, get to work on the nettle soup.’ Tom’s mother tossed the bunch of stinging nettles across the room to a girl who caught it, then cried ‘Ow!’ and promptly dropped the bunch on the floor. ‘Sorry, Mistress Pippin.’ She scooped up the nettles, tossed them from hand to hand, then threw them into the nearby sink to wash.
Tom’s mother seized a knife and began to chop up the dandelion leaves so fast her knife was a mere blur. At once all the other women began to chop faster too. The thunk of metal against wood echoed among the beams.
‘Right, Tom, I need you to get started on all those pots,’ said Mistress Pippin as she chopped, ‘and then you can help the footmen polish the silver. We have unexpected guests for the midsummer feast tonight, and need to lay another two dozen places … and get that dog out of my butter barrel!’
Tom dragged Fergus’s nose away from the butter, wondering how his mother had known what the wolfhound was doing. ‘Mam,’ he said, but she was too busy chopping to hear him. He called her again, more loudly this time, and his mother paused and looked at him in surprise. ‘What is it, Tomkin?’
‘I … I met the wild man in the woods today.’
Mistress Pippin’s knife fell with a clatter to the floor. She stared at Tom, eyes round. ‘The wild man?’
When Tom nodded, she looked around her, as if making sure nobody was watching or listening, then caught Tom’s shoulder and drew him down the kitchen and into the chill of the buttery. Once she had shut the door behind them, she said urgently, ‘What did he say, Tom?’
He told her, and somehow, the words no longer seemed stupid, but as charged with danger and meaning as when the wild man had spoken them in the shadowy tangle of the forest.
‘He said I have to tell the lord, but … Mam, no-one will listen to me.’
‘Of course you must tell the lord,’ she said. She took Tom’s hand and marched him out of the buttery, through the kitchen, and up the stairs to the butler’s pantry, Fergus trotting behind.
‘Tom has important news,’ she told the butler. ‘I tell you, he must see the lord.’
‘See the lord? Young Tom? Not likely,’ the butler answered.
‘You make sure he sees the lord, or there’ll be no more spiced pear and butterscotch pudding for you,’ Mistress Pippin warned.
The butler sat up at once, almost popping all his buttons in his haste. ‘No need for that, Mistress Pippin, I’ll do what I can!’
She left Tom there, and raced back to her kitchen so fast the ribbons of her cap streamed behind her.
Tom told his tale again. The butler hummed and hawed, but took Tom to the castle steward.
Tom told his tale yet again. The steward rasped his chin and frowned, but took Tom to see the chamberlain.
Tom told the tale one more time, feeling like an absolute fool. The chamberlain yawned and stretched, then mumbled that he would pass the message on, if he could just find the time. He waved Tom away, then lay back in his chair, spread his handkerchief over his face, and promptly began to snore.
By that time, Tom was so frustrated that he felt as if steam was about to burst out of his ears. He stood for a moment, wondering if he dared go up the stairs to the great hall and accost Lord Wolfgang himself. Tom was fairly sure the lord’s bodyguards would simply kick him back down again. So, scowling, he went down the stairs, wondering what else he could do.
A girl, dressed in white with bare feet and a wild mass of curly, black hair, was sitting in a window archway, studying an enormous book. She looked up as he slouched by, and raised her eyebrows. ‘You know that there are only three words that end in the sound “gree”? You look like two of them, at least.’
‘I’m not in the mood for riddles, Quinn,’ Tom snapped.
‘Of course not, since riddles are for the wise,’ she answered, her turquoise-green eyes gleaming. ‘Still, I’m sure you’ll agree, you’re angry and hungry, so riddle me ree, can you tell me all three?’
‘Go boil your head,’ Tom replied and jumped down two steps at once to get past her. Quinn had become a lot more annoying since she had been apprenticed to the castle witch, he thought.
‘You go boil yours,’ she answered and stuck out her tongue at him.